Poetry crosses borders – the power of words in many languages

For the most part these were young people following their parents’ work – maybe being transplanted to Belgium from, say, Colombia, South Africa, Hong Kong or the US for a few years, and then onwards, either home or another country. 

I spend a lot of time in my events and travels in general talking about young people as creatives and often find that those with different experiences to the majority of their peers have an ability to use this to fuel creativity, to think differently. 

These young people in Brussels were bound together by experiences different to most pupils their own age. So many different cultures, voices, languages and experiences thrown together into one classroom, one school, one community, who understood that their native language and culture was something to be celebrated, and it was incredible to hear and see so many of them within my sessions responding by writing poems in whatever language and voice they chose to. 

I heard poems read in Icelandic, Spanish, Italian – young people talking about their own thoughts and feelings in their own voices. Making their own decisions about how to articulate whatever they wanted to say. 

And then onwards to The Hague, and the Crossing Borders Festival. 

There has been a beautiful groundswell of support for my verse novel The Final Year in the Netherlands, and the success of the book in my opinion is largely down to the sensitive work of translator Willem Jan Kok. He found a copy of the book in English, loved it and took it to Volt, the publisher he works for in the Netherlands, and basically said: ​‘I must translate this book!’. 

Thankfully the publisher acquiesced, and Het Laatste Jaar is the product of his endeavours. I’ve had a few books translated previously, but poetry is a genre that publishers seemed to be nervous of translating. Many foreign publishers have read The Final Year and said the same sort of thing: ​‘Great story, but we don’t understand the dialect and school system.’ 

So, there the story ends for most territories, which itself throws up many interesting questions around film/​music/​theatre and the arts in general – must we have everything presented to us in a neat package that fits our own lives and culture? 

I attended a recent event at the British Library where the American author Jason Reynolds was talking about how the UK was one of the last territories in the world to get on board with his books because he was told that they were too American for the UK market. Interesting stuff to think about. 

When Willem was beginning the translation process for The Final Year, he said he could see Nate’s life being played out in Rotterdam, and he set about doing just that – translating not just the words, but the culture, the feel, the education system, the dialect. And he did it beautifully, demonstrating quite clearly, I think, that human stories cross borders. Yes, of course, he made the decision to replace Manchester with Rotterdam, but Nate is still Nate. A boy with thoughts, feelings and ideas. 

In the Hague, Willem was kind enough to come up on stage and perform a poem from Het Laatste Jaar just after I’d done the English version, so the audience, many of whom didn’t speak English, had a chance to experience the flow and feel of both versions. I’m eternally grateful to Willem and his determination to not let a good story go. 

So many young people in the UK today will speak more than one language – and it’s so important for them to be able to see, and hear these different languages – similarities and differences, ebbs and flows, the voices of their history. And poetry is such a vital tool for both educators and young people to find the voice that they want to write in, to perform in – to say, this is me, this is what I want to say and how I want to say it.

Moving forwards, I’m definitely going to make it a priority to seek out more stories in translation – and a great starting point is the BookTrust list here. 

Let me know your favourite stories/​poems etc in translation – what should I absolutely seek out next?